Soaring Altitudes

Several Indian corporates are eyeing a huge chunk in the aerospace manufacturing pie, traditionally dominated by government owned firms.

Global annual growth 0.3%(2017)

- C.H. Unnikrishnan

HATTARGI HAS NO RAILWAY STATION NEARBY. Most of the rural folks in this hilly hamlet in Belagavi, Karnataka haven’t yet seen the State capital Bengaluru, which is 564 km away. And it was not very far ago, a proper road connectivity was established to this Karnataka-Goa border village from the comparatively nearer small and sleepy towns such as Hukeri, Sankeshwar, Konnur, Gokak and Nipani. For a geography popular for sugar factories, textiles and tobacco, something as contrasting as rocket science is not an unfriendly territory for the villagers here, and there isn’t anything unusual about the common sight of American or German engineers from global aircraft giants such as Boeing, Airbus or Bombardier casually walking around in this village now.

The little known village, Hattargi, currently supplies several critical machine parts to the world’s most modern aeroplanes such as Airbus A380neo, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and others.

The aerospace industry is emerging big in India and Hattargi is just one among the many industry hubs that has come up across the country in this space in the last 10-15 years. Although different in many aspects compared to India’s traditional industry sectors in terms of quality parameters and skill sets, this ‘zero-error’ globally integrated manufacturing sector is striving in India.

“Globally, aerospace manufacturing is worth about $100 billion, but India’s share has been only about $250 million as of now,” says Aravind Melligeri, who set up India’s first fully integrated and one of the world’s most efficient aerospace manufacturing ecosystems in Hattargi village eight years ago. “But with fully equipped facilities and fast emerging talent-base and innovation, India could be a force to reckon with by 2020,” says Melligeri.